What a Neat Idea

I ran across the below article this morning and thought I would learn the process to post and embed a YouTube video. This ball could finally achieve the statement of "I wish I could bottle up all that energy and use it later."

BOSTON, MA – A soccer ball that generates electricity that could help light African homes has won recognition in the sixth annual Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards, the magazine announced today.



The ball, developed by Jessica Lin, Jessica O. Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar, when they were still undergraduates at Harvard University can generate enough energy during 15 minutes of play to provide three hours of LED light, which could come in handy in sub-Saharan Africa, where less than 25 percent of the population has reliable electricity, the magazine said.

The sOccket ball has an embedded DC jack and weighs only 5 ounces more than an official ball. A future model could generate enough power to charge a cellphone, the magazine said in a news release.